Cortney Davis
Michigan State University Press, 2018
Edited by Nancy L. Diekelmann
University of Wisconsin Press, 2003
Christina Juris Bennett
Vanderbilt University Press, 2014
While many states cut back on their Medicaid enrollments from 1993 to 2001, TennCare grew from 750,000 to 1.47 million enrollees. The state was less successful in controlling costs, however. Each major stakeholder group (the state, the managed care organizations, the providers, and the enrollees and their advocates) pushed back against parts of the state's strategy that adversely affected their interests, and they eventually dismantled the mechanisms of cost constraint.
The author lays out the four stakeholder perspectives for each period in the history of TennCare and provides a link to difficult-to-access primary documents.
S. L. Wisenberg
University of Iowa Press, 2009
John Iliffe
Ohio University Press, 2006
A Choice Significant University Press Titles for Undergraduates, 2005–2006
This history of the African AIDS epidemic is a much-needed, accessibly written historical account of the most serious epidemiological catastrophe of modern times. The African AIDS Epidemic: A History answers President Thabo Mbeki’s provocative question as to why Africa has suffered this terrible epidemic.
While Mbeki attributed the causes to poverty and exploitation, others have looked to distinctive sexual systems practiced in African cultures and communities. John Iliffe stresses historical sequence. He argues that Africa has had the worst epidemic because the disease was established in the general population before anyone knew the disease existed. HIV evolved with extraordinary speed and complexity, and because that evolution took place under the eyes of modern medical research scientists, Iliffe has been able to write a history of the virus itself that is probably unique among accounts of human epidemic diseases. In giving the African experience a historical shape, Iliffe has written one of the most important books of our time.
The African experience of AIDS has taught the world much of what it knows about HIV/AIDS, and this fascinating book brings into focus many aspects of the epidemic in the longer context of massive demographic growth, urbanization, and social change in Africa during the latter half of the twentieth century. The African AIDS Epidemic: A History is a brilliant introduction to the many aspects of the epidemic and the distinctive character of the virus.
Larry C. Johns
University of Nevada Press, 2017
Daniel M. Davis
University of Chicago Press, 2018
Maren Klawiter
University of Minnesota Press, 2008
For nearly forty years, feminists and patient activists have argued that medicine is a deeply individualizing and depoliticizing institution. According to this view, medical practices are incidental to people’s transformation from patients to patient activists. The Biopolitics of Breast Cancer turns this understanding upside down.
Maren Klawiter analyzes the evolution of the breast cancer movement to show the broad social impact of how diseases come to be medically managed and publicly administered. Examining surgical procedures, adjuvant therapies, early detection campaigns, and the rise in discourses of risk, Klawiter demonstrates that these practices created a change in the social relations-if not the mortality rate-of breast cancer that initially inhibited, but later enabled, collective action. Her research focuses on the emergence and development of new forms of activism that range from grassroots patient empowerment to environmental activism and corporate-funded breast cancer awareness.
The Biopolitics of Breast Cancer opens a window onto a larger set of changes currently transforming medically advanced societies and ultimately challenges our understanding of the origins, politics, and future of the breast cancer movement.
Maren Klawiter holds a PhD in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley. She is currently pursuing a law degree at Yale University.
Nina Lohman
University of Iowa Press, 2024
Tricia Starks
University of Wisconsin Press, 2008
Cathy Cohen
University of Chicago Press, 1999
Arvind Singhal
Ohio University Press, 2003
Edited by Peggy Carlson M.D.
University of Illinois Press, 2009
Essential and in-depth The Complete Vegetarian is an invaluable guide for health professionals and the growing number of people who have adopted or want to adopt a vegetarian lifestyle.
Luc Vanier, Rebecca Nettl-Fiol, and Elizabeth Johnson
University of Illinois Press, 2026
Everyone can have their own movement practice. Building on Dance and the Alexander Technique, Luc Vanier, Rebecca Nettl-Fiol, and Elizabeth Johnson present an innovative method for observing and analyzing movement in daily life, the performing arts, and therapeutic contexts.
The authors’ Framework for Integration is a multifaceted approach to understanding and refining human movement. Core principles—such as psychophysical unity, developmental movement, and attention to breath—reveal how small changes in awareness and intent transform activities ranging from yoga and Tai Chi to sitting meditation, from gardening and sports to playing a musical instrument. Real-world applications highlight how individuals of all abilities and ages can reduce pain, improve coordination, and discover more efficient, joyful movement. Guest contributors detail how these concepts enhance artistic expression, interventions for trauma or chronic pain, and everyday tasks like driving and housework.
Engaging and aimed at non-specialists, The Dance of Everyday Movement invites practitioners from all walks of life to embrace ongoing development, resilience, and a more embodied way of living.
Vaslav Nijinsky
University of Illinois Press, 2006
A uniquely personal record of a great artist’s experience of mental illness
In his prime, Vaslav Nijinsky (1889-1950) was the most celebrated man in Western ballet--a virtuoso and a dramatic dancer such as European and American audiences had never seen before. After his triumphs in such works as The Specter of the Rose and Petrouchka, he set out to make ballets of his own, and with his Afternoon of a Faun and The Rite of Spring, created within a year of each other, he became ballet’s first modernist choreographer.
For six weeks in early 1919, as his tie to reality was giving way, Nijinsky kept a diary--the only sustained daily record we have, by a major artist, of the experience of entering psychosis. In some entries he is filled with hope. He is God; he will save the world. In other entries, he falls into a black despair. He is dogged by sexual obsessions and grief over World War I. Furthermore, he is afraid that he is going insane.
The diary was first published in 1936, in a version heavily bowdlerized by Nijinsky’s wife. The new edition, translated by Kyril FitzLyon, is the first complete and accurate English rendering of this searing document. In her introduction, noted dance critic Joan Acocella tells Nijinsky’s story and places it in the context of early European modernism.
Michael Bliss
University of Chicago Press, 1982
Michael Bliss
University of Chicago Press, 2007
Liz Kalaugher
University of Chicago Press, 2025
Robert B. Santulli and Kesstan Blandin
Dartmouth College Press, 2015
Nicholas Culpeper
University of Alabama Press, 2007
A foundational text in Western herbal medicine bridging botany, astrology, and early modern healing practices.
The English Physician is a humble vest-pocket-sized 94-page medical guide for the common person, by the prolific herbalist and author Nicholas Culpeper. It was a staple in 17th-century England, as it was short, written in accessible prose, and inexpensive; and perhaps as attractive, it took a decidedly skeptical view of "official" medicine, relying instead on popular remedies. Culpeper’s philosophy was to teach the common folk to minister to themselves by providing them with the tools and knowledge for self-help.
Published in Boston in 1708 by Nicholas Boone, the American version of The English Physician was widely cited and used at the time. Today only five copies are known to exist. The rarity of this vade mecum of colonial America is wrapped in mystery: Who really wrote this book and when, where, and how did it originate?
The editor illuminates these mysteries while adding an informative historical introduction on the state of medical knowledge and practice at the time, exploring Culpeper’s position among competing medical writers, and glossing the medical and botanical terms, providing contemporary equivalents. Modern readers will discover the meaning behind the strangely named brews and concoctions of the 17th century and will learn how this Boston printing literally transformed the American landscape with herbs brought from the British colonists’ homeland.
Kim Boyer
University of Nevada Press, 2014
Donald H. Kausler, Barry C. Kausler & Jill A. Krupsaw
University of Missouri Press, 2007
For more than a decade, The Graying of America has helped thousands of middle-aged and senior citizens find their way through the thickets and thorns of growing old. Now greatly revised and expanded to include information gleaned from studies of the past five years, this third edition has been retitled to stress its ongoing purpose: conveying a wealth of commonsense information for general readers in nontechnical language.
The book is a storehouse of concise, useful information on the effects of aging on health, the mind, and behavior. Its 588 entries (including 172 new and 150 substantially revised) cover a broad spectrum of topics—from adjusting to retirement to grandparenting, sleep disorders to Alzheimer’s disease. All are directed to the average reader; all stress successful aging and how to accomplish it.
New entries cover such topics as the incidence and causes of frailty, the cognitive benefits of diversified activity, and findings of the Women’s Health Initiative. There is new information on matters like the effects of untreated hearing impairment on spouses and the impact of insufficient exposure to sunlight on sleep, plus new insight into what to look for in searching for a quality nursing home for a loved one.
Also included are results of recent studies on interventions that help to reduce age-related declines in mental and physical health, among them revelations that reports on age-related declines in memory have been skewed by testing errors. And with memory a concern for seniors fearful of declining mental agility, the book tells how to bypass memory problems—such as how to remember where you parked your car—and how physical exercise and challenging mental games can help reduce the risk of dementia. Other “how to avoid” entries offer ways to protect against eye fatigue in computer use, hip fractures when falling, and back injuries while lifting heavy objects.
No other book is so specifically geared to the challenges of how to reduce or even eliminate many of the problems associated with growing old. Aging in the Twenty-First Century can help seniors come to grips with their own aging process—and help younger adults understand what is happening to older family members.

Darrel Moellendorf
Intellect Books, 2026
A visceral personal memoir of being seriously unwell—and the consolations of philosophy during sickness.
Being a patient is part of being alive. Disease and serious illness often strike randomly, and when they do, we quickly become subject to the impersonal forces of biochemistry and pharmacology. We rarely think about sickness beforehand and are often totally unprepared for it when it happens. Suddenly, there we are, subject to a standard treatment protocol.
Darrel Noellendorf learned this by experience during a month confined to a solitary and sterile hospital room where he received a life-saving stem cell transplant. His room was somebody’s workspace, his schedule was somebody’s work routine, his immune system was systematically crushed, and his prognosis was out of his hands. There was no assurance that it would all work out.
Having spent thirty years teaching philosophy to college students, He was facing the biggest test of all—perhaps the final exam. These are his reflections before, during, and after his cancer treatment, written in real time. He writes, “My brain was sometimes addled by the chemotherapy that sapped my energy and destroyed my immune system, but I wrote out of the conviction that living well includes living well with disease, and eventually living well facing death.” This memoir expresses the conviction that the virtues of patience, courage, trust, and hope serve us well. A measure of good humor also can’t hurt.
Stefan Timmermans and Marc Berg
Temple University Press, 2003

Donald H. Kausler and Barry C. Kausler
University of Illinois Press, 2001
Miryam Z. Wahrman
Brandeis University Press, 2016
Teitel, Rosette
Rutgers University Press, 2001
William H. Schneider
Ohio University Press, 2021
This new collection of essays on HIV viruses spans disciplines to topple popular narratives about the origins of the AIDS pandemic and the impact of the disease on public health policy.
With a death toll in the tens of millions, the AIDS pandemic was one of the worst medical disasters of the past century. The disease was identified in 1981, at the height of miraculous postwar medical achievements, including effective antibiotics, breakthrough advances in heart surgery and transplantations, and cheap, safe vaccines—smallpox had been eradicated just a few years earlier. Arriving as they did during this era of confidence in modern medicine, the HIV epidemics shook the public’s faith in health science. Despite subsequent success in identifying, testing, and treating AIDS, the emergence of epidemics and outbreaks of Ebola, Zika, and the novel coronaviruses (SARS and COVID-19) are stark reminders that such confidence in modern medicine is not likely to be restored until the emergence of these viruses is better understood.
This collection combines the work of major social science and humanities scholars with that of virologists and epidemiologists to provide a broader understanding of the historical, social, and cultural circumstances that produced the pandemic. The authors argue that the emergence of the HIV viruses and their epidemic spread were not the result of a random mutation but rather broader new influences whose impact depended upon a combination of specific circumstances at different places and times. The viruses emerged and were transmitted according to population movement and urbanization, changes in sexual relations, new medical procedures, and war. In this way, the AIDS pandemic was not a chance natural occurrence, but a human-made disaster.
Essays by: Ernest M. Drucker, Tamara Giles-Vernick, Ch. Didier Gondola, Guillaume Lachenal, Amandine Lauro, Preston A. Marx, Stephanie Rupp, François Simon, Jorge Varanda
William H. Schneider
Ohio University Press, 2013
This first extensive study of the practice of blood transfusion in Africa traces the history of one of the most important therapies in modern medicine from the period of colonial rule to independence and the AIDS epidemic. The introduction of transfusion held great promise for improving health, but like most new medical practices, transfusion needed to be adapted to the needs of sub-Saharan Africa, for which there was no analogous treatment in traditional African medicine.
This otherwise beneficent medical procedure also created a “royal road” for microorganisms, and thus played a central part in the emergence of human immune viruses in epidemic form. As with more developed health care systems, blood transfusion practices in sub-Saharan Africa were incapable of detecting the emergence of HIV. As a result, given the wide use of transfusion, it became an important pathway for the initial spread of AIDS. Yet African health officials were not without means to understand and respond to the new danger, thanks to forty years of experience and a framework of appreciating long-standing health risks. The response to this risk, detailed in this book, yields important insight into the history of epidemics and HIV/AIDS.
Drawing on research from colonial-era governments, European Red Cross societies, independent African governments, and directly from health officers themselves, this book is the only historical study of the practice of blood transfusion in Africa.
Anibal Faundes
Vanderbilt University Press, 2006
Deeply touched by the tragedies of botched abortions that they witnessed as medical students and young physicians in Chile in the 1940s and later around the world, the authors have attempted in their professional lives and now in this book to establish a framework for dialogue to replace the polarization that exists today.
Doctors Faundes and Barzelatto use their decades of international work to document the personal experiences of different classes of women in different countries and those countries' policies and practices. No other book provides such a comprehensive and reasoned examination of the entire topic of abortion, from the medical to the religious and ethical and from the psychological to the legal, in plain language understandable by non-specialists.
The central thesis is that there are too many induced abortions in the world today, that most are preventable and should be prevented--a middle ground that both pro-life and pro-choice advocates can accept. The first part of the book reviews why women have abortions, as well as the magnitude and consequences. The second part examines values. The third part discusses effective interventions. The final part states conclusions about what can be done to reach a necessary social consensus.
The Portuguese edition of this book was issued at the very end of 2004. The Spanish edition, launched in mid-2005, is already in a second printing. The authors are making presentations at special events sponsored by universities, professional associations, and feminist networks in Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, and the United States.
Casey Sherman and Dave Wedge
University Press of New England, 2017
Everett Yuehong Zhang
Duke University Press, 2015
Matthew C. Ehrlich
University of Illinois Press, 2024
The brainchild of an obscure Yugoslav physician, Krebiozen emerged in 1951 as an alleged cancer treatment. Andrew Ivy, a University of Illinois vice president and a famed physiologist dubbed “the conscience of U.S. science,” wholeheartedly embraced Krebiozen. Ivy’s impeccable credentials and reputation made the treatment seem like another midcentury medical miracle. But after years of controversy, the improbable saga ended with Krebiozen proved a sham, its inventor fleeing the country, and Ivy’s reputation and legacy in ruins.
Matthew C. Ehrlich’s history of Krebiozen tells a quintessential story of quackery. Though most experts dismissed the treatment, it found passionate public support not only among cancer patients but also people in good health. The treatment’s rise and fall took place against the backdrop of America’s never-ending suspicion of educational, scientific, and medical expertise. In addition, Ehrlich examines why people readily believe misinformation and struggle to maintain hope in the face of grave threats to well-being.
A dramatic account of fraud and misplaced trust, The Krebiozen Hoax shines a light on a forgotten medical scandal and its all-too-familiar relevance in the twenty-first century.
John Thorndike
Ohio University Press, 2021
Todd Weissman
University of Massachusetts Press, 2026
Showing that everyday people offer the deepest, most relatable lessons in grace
Offering an intimate glimpse into the lives of individuals connected to one of the world’s foremost centers for cancer care and research, The Light That Endures reveals how ordinary people at Boston’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute demonstrate extraordinary resilience in the face of life’s most challenging moments. Through eight captivating profiles, readers meet a world-renowned pediatric oncologist who rode on horseback at Eisenhower’s inauguration, delivered a secret message in Soviet-controlled Czechoslovakia, and hosted the future King of England; a florist-turned-nurse-turned-teacher whose life changed drastically after a chance encounter on a train; an administrator who has faced adversity his entire life, from a violent father, to confronting his own identity, to being held up at gunpoint; a teenage patient whose battle with cancer was just one of many challenges he has navigated; and a woman who, despite spending her life bringing comfort to others, wonders whether she’s been enough as she reflects after a terminal diagnosis.
These remarkable people, diverse in their backgrounds, share a common bond through cancer and Dana-Farber, that much is obvious. However, it is their quiet acts of grace and service—woven into both their professional paths and personal journeys—that more deeply unite them. Their stories reveal a deeper truth: despite hardship and loss, the arc of life bends toward goodness. Fractured childhoods, family estrangement, mental health strains, winding career paths, and the ever-present shadow of self-doubt are not just obstacles but catalysts. The individuals profiled have found hope and meaning in community and their work, shaping lives of purpose, service, and gratitude. More than a recounting of lives touched by cancer, The Light That Endures is a celebration of the profound impact of compassion and human connection. It captures the essence of Dana-Farber’s ethos, where a shared mission of care fosters an environment of empathy and hope.
H. Henrietta Stockel
University of Nevada Press, 1995
More than simply a history of the bow and arrow, The Lightening Stick brings together a broad range of significant people and events, spiritual usages, medicinal treatments, and an unusual array of subject matter related to the weapon itself. Henrietta Stockel conveys a host of information derived from primary documents and provides readers with a fascinating book. Her descriptive storytelling—serious, humorous, and even gory at times—takes the reader from modern uses of bows and arrows (including a previously little-known incident in the atomic city of Los Alamos, New Mexico) to an early era of western history, before guns changed the frontier forever.
Alma Igra
University of Chicago Press, 2026
Reveals how nutrition science emerged from Britain’s attempts to mold the food chain to its imperial interests.
The Lion’s Share offers a biography of nutrition as a scientific discipline, from its imperial birth, through its rise to fame, to its integration into an environmental and political global order. Even though medical knowledge involved food since ancient times, at the beginning of the twentieth century, nutrition was not yet a scientific discipline in an institutional or practical sense. Nevertheless, by the 1930s, it was one of the most politically influential scientific fields, with nutritionists operating as medical diplomats within national, international, and imperial organizations. As historian Alma Igra explains, it is through the global networks of British power that a decidedly marginal field of technical knowledge concerned with agricultural productivity and animal feeding evolved into an area of expertise governing the human diet and related issues of public health, economic development, and humanitarian aid.
The Lion’s Share visits five pivotal moments that prompted new nutritional research at transnational meetings in Scotland, Iraq, Vienna, Geneva, and the Netherlands. Through the eyes of the experts, Igra tracks how nutrition became an international science, with mobile labs, collaborations among institutions, and a constant clash between local and imperial practices. Standardization of food measurement created new ways for food to be international and allowed politicians to imagine the world as one. Yet tensions remained that shaped international policy in the twentieth century and still affect international land policy today.
Sarah B. Rodriguez
Rutgers University Press, 2020
Nelly Oudshoorn
Duke University Press, 2003
Oudshoorn emphasizes that the introduction of contraceptives for men depends to a great extent on changing ideas about reproductive responsibility. Initial interest in the male pill, she shows, came from outside the scientific community: from the governments of China and India, which were interested in population control, and from Western feminists, who wanted the responsibilities and health risks associated with contraception shared more equally between the sexes. She documents how in the 1970s, the World Health Organization took the lead in investigating male contraceptives by coordinating an unprecedented, worldwide research network. She chronicles how the search for a male pill required significant reorganization of drug-testing standards and protocols and of the family-planning infrastructure—including founding special clinics for men, creating separate spaces for men within existing clinics, enrolling new professionals, and defining new categories of patients. The Male Pill is ultimately a story as much about the design of masculinities in the last decades of the twentieth century as it is about the development of safe and effective technologies.
Suzanne Farrell Smith
Bucknell University Press, 2019
Jody McAuliffe
University of Iowa Press, 2013
Diana L. Ahmad
University of Nevada Press, 2011
Rebecca Katz and Mackenzi S. Moore
Vanderbilt University Press, 2024

Rebecca Katz and Mackenzi S. Moore
Vanderbilt University Press, 2024
Lisa Z. Sigel
Reaktion Books, 2020
Ally Day
The Ohio State University Press, 2021
Bobbi L. Newman and Carolyn Martin
American Library Association, 2026
It often starts with a patron’s simple question. Librarians play a central role in helping people navigate information, evaluate sources, and find answers they can trust. That includes health information, something many people come to the library looking for every day. Maybe they need more information about a diagnosis, a medication, or something they came across online. Perhaps they’re helping a family member with a medical issue or trying to better understand their own health. These are everyday interactions in libraries. And this book is about helping you approach them with confidence, clarity, and a strong sense of your role. You do not need a medical background to provide excellent health information service — just the right frameworks, tools, and reassurance to apply your core skills in a health context. No matter your comfort level or prior experience, you will
Steven Epstein
University of Chicago Press, 2022
Susan G. Solomon
University Press of New England, 2014
Laurent Joubert
University of Alabama Press, 1995
English translation of the second volume of Laurent Joubert’s 1578 French work Erreurs Populaires
Joubert proposed to dispel folk remedies and folklore still relied on by doctors and care-givers in France. It also challenged medical theories and advice from classical Greek and Latin writers that French doctors followed uncritically.